How to Get A Website/Blog Approved and Listed in Google News

Google News has been an abundant source of Traffic for many websites since few years. Previously there were only a few publishers on Google News so things were pretty easy, back then. But now many sites got into google news to drive traffic to their blog/websites. However, Google News still acts as a good source of traffic for websites that produce good quality content in large volumes.

If you are new here you should check out my article on Things you need to know about Google News.

In this article, I will explain you the step by step process to get your website/blog into Google News. Things are not that easy but if you follow all the steps properly then the chances of your website getting into news would increase.

Steps to get your Website into Google News:

1.Your Website Theme/Look

Your website theme plays a key role in getting you approved for google news. It should be of Magazine Style with proper section wise news on various topics like Politics, Education, Entertainment, Technology etc.

As the name says the theme must look like a news website. There are many themes out there, if in case you are a WordPress user you can go ahead with some popular Magazine Style Theme.

You can have a look at popular news sites India Today, Times of India, All India Roundup etc

2. Your Website must be complete with all required info:

Your website must have pages like About Us, Contact Us, Media Kit and an Authors page as well. Of all these, you must have an about us page where you have to list all your authors with a brief bio.

You can have a look at a sample page here

3. Website must be Multi-Authored:

This is quite obvious. A single person alone cannot produce lots of content daily. So, it should have a minimum of 2-3 authors who covers on various topics each and every single day.

4. Do not post about Job Updates, Notifications, and How-To Guides:

This is one of the biggest mistakes people do, posting about jobs and job notifications is completely against Google News TOS. So, if you have any articles about Job updates and notifications you have to remove them immediately before you apply for Google News.

However, you can post few job updates after your site gets a full approval for Google News.

Along with that do not post How-To guides, a website with how to guides doesn’t get a news approval as the name says the website must be updated with latest news stuff and not how to guides. If in case you are posting How to guides exclude them for the news sitemap.

5. Author bio on Post Pages

The author name is a must, but bio is generally optional. But if you are applying for an approval then having an author bio will increase your chances of getting approved.

6. You must divide content into sections/categories

Every news website has some categories so divide content into different categories because Google News will ask you for different sections like Headlines, Technology, Entertainment etc while you are applying for Google News.

7. You must publish good number of articles per day

Generally they say you can get into news if you publish 3 articles per day. But believe me, that wouldn’t be sufficient enough. You must publish at least 10 articles per day and before few days of applying publish at least 15+ articles per day.

8. Grammar plays a key role

Your application will be reviewed manually by someone from Google News team. They will verify the complete website to the best possible extent and they will manually read few articles posted on your website. So, no matter even if you have satisfied all the above guidelines if your website doesn’t have proper grammar then your application will be declined without any hesitation.

9. Google News Sitemap and News Keyword Tag

Google News sitemap is a little different from the sitemap which you generally have on your blog. A Google News sitemap will have only a maximum of 1000 URLs in the index at a time.

Also, you need one more additional tag called news_keywords tag, however, this is optional initially but if you have one for your blog the chances of getting approval would increase.

For these two I would highly recommend you to go for Yoast SEO News Plugin if you are a WordPress user which is a premium plugin and you have to pay for it.

Alternately you can also use Google News XML Plugin for Sitemap and Google News Keywords from Tags plugin for news_keywords tag.

10. If you cannot do all the above steps then do this

If you follow all the above steps properly then you can definitely get into google news but I know the above-mentioned steps are a little difficult to achieve and takes some time.

Also, sometimes even though you have followed all the above steps, still your application might get rejected due to some unknown reasons.

Alternately you can buy a website/domain which is already listed in Google News. There are quite a few brokers on Flippa and few other marketplaces who sell expired/parked domains that are already listed in Google News. It would cost you anywhere between $500 to $5000 based on the demand for the domain/website.

One you are done with all the steps head over to this page and click on Google News Publisher Center at the bottom of the page. Generally it takes 2-5 days to know whether your application is accepted or rejected. If in case its rejected you have to wait for 90 more days. So, give your best on the first attempt itself.

So, I guess it’s very clear on how to get your site listed on to Google News. It’s not easy at the same time it’s not impossible as well. Do contact me if you need any help in getting your site listed on Google News, I can help you out with the same.

My next article would be on optimizing a Google News website stay tuned.

Why Internal Links Are Essential To Your Website

What’s the big deal about internal links, and why should you pay attention to them?

An internal link is a hyperlink which points to a page or target on the same website from which it is situated; in other words, it can be used to navigate to a different area of the same domain. Often their importance is understated, even by professionals who devalue them. So here it is, everything you need to know about how and why you should be using internal links in your websites, and what may have gone wrong if for some reason your pages are unreachable.

They make your website navigable for users

Let’s set the crawlers aside for just a moment and discuss what internal links do for the users of your site. Being that they link all of your pages together, displaying internal links become critical tools for binding your website together in such a way that your users can easily navigate around it.

This is where custom software development and web development become very useful because the right company can help you make something that not only caters to your business needs but also your users’. There would be very little point to putting in all that time and effort into developing a series of stunning pages if no one were to see them, having come from your landing page.

If you’re relying purely on SEO to make your pages navigable then you aren’t really being fair to users who actually want to traverse your website. But quite frankly, if you have no internal links setup, then even your SEO will suffer. This is when you need to ask yourself, is your online marketing bringing you results?

They give your website structure

One of the most important functions of internal links is their ability to create hierarchy within your website. Your homepage links to parent pages, which link to child pages and so on and so forth in a neat fashion which benefits your users and the crawlers.

Let’s take the example of DigitalSearchGroup.com.au, from their homepage you can navigate to ‘home’ (the homepage itself), ‘organic search’, ‘about’, ‘blog’, ‘testimonials’ and ‘contact us’; some of which have sub-links within them to navigate further down the site. Doing this has essentially created a yellow brick road which can be followed by both users, and search engine crawlers to properly index the site.

They spread out the ranking power

There are many ways to secure your WordPress site while optimising your pages so that they rank for the queries they are intended for. Any page of your website does not need to suffer in ranking to accommodate the other pages which have theirs boosted. In terms of SEO, wouldn’t it be better if a user could be directed to pages and services they are looking for, directly from the search engine, depending on their queries.

Internal links help create what is commonly referred to as ‘link juice’ by giving search engine crawlers bridges to the other pages on your site. Without internal links it might be impossible for the crawlers to even know that other pages actually exist on the site, which means they will not be indexed into the search engine, and therefor may get completely lost in the digital ether.

This can also make things difficult for you as a developer to manage, especially as far as bad backlinks are concerned. To earn more about distinguishing bad links from good links as well as local SEO services in Sydney, contact Digital Search Australia.

Reasons for unreachable pages

Of course, simply laying out internal links for every page may not be enough to make pages easily available for users, but it’s the crawlers which can be most finicky in this regard. There are a few things you should look out for when using internal links that might still make the pages unreachable:

Links to submission required forms like drop down menus and surveys will not be recognised by crawlers since they will not attempt to submit a form, be careful to make sure that there are other internal links pointing to these pages.
Links from internal search boxes will not be make visible since crawlers will not attempt to submit a search query, perhaps this may work in the distant future when artificial intelligence becomes an actual thing, but as for now, this isn’t enough of an indexing strategy.
Java-scrip, Flash, and other plugins could also be uncrawlable and if they are, often do very little for the rating of a sites. For the best results in this regard it is often better to use HTML.

Hopefully this has given you a better understanding of the benefits and proper use of internal links to help users and crawlers to navigate and index your website.

How to Get Google Adsense Approval With A New Blog

Google Adsense is one of the best ad networks to monetize a website or a blog. It is 90% better than any other CPC advertising programs. It offers the publishers the highest CTR for every web page. The publishers could make lots of revenue daily from Google Adsense. Every new webmaster has a dream to monetize his website with this ad network. But unfortunately, many of them fail. Adsense has introduced some strict rules and requirements. It seems hard to get Adsense approval for our own blog. But, we know impossible is nothing

The good news is “Getting Approval of Google Adsense with a New Blog is Now Really Easy”, if you follow some basic rules from the starting of your blog. When I first tried, I failed to get approval. But, following these rules, now I have an approved AdSense account. Thinking about this topic, I made a decision to share the basic rules of AdSense.

First Ready Your Blog Before Applying for Adsense:

Adsense moderators always approve those blogs whose have met up the requirements. First of all, you should make your blog ready for this process. Check first if your blog considers these requirements. Now, there are some initial basic requirements announced by AdSense team, and there are some known hacks and tricks that work. For example, on this official page it’s mentioned that for countries like China & India, publishers need to own the site for minimum 6 months, which is not a thumb-rule. Many Indian bloggers have got approval with one-month-old domain. The only thing which really matter here is “Quality”. Let’s look at factors which will make your blog AdSense ready:

Write High-Quality Contents:

A writing proverb “Content is King” helps you understand this requirement. A high-quality blog is identified with the high-quality contents. Great contents mean unique, decorated, stated and clear concerted content. Some black hat webmasters say, copy paste content only between 100-200 words is enough. But, I may assure him that his journey to Adsense will be certainly finished. I think, how a blog post or content could be only between 100-200 words? In my judgment, it is not possible to completely describe a topic within 100-200 words. And if copy paste content is enough, anybody can declare him as a blogger. Please keep in mind, Google AdSense doesn’t approve blogs with copy pasted copyright content. A well-optimized blog post should be 100% unique and above 500-600 words. So, always write blog post above this limit and it must be unique which clearly determinate the post topic.engine Friendly:

Optimize your unique blog post with Meta Title and Description Tag. The meta tags describe what the content is about to the crawler bots. It is not possible for AdSense editorial board to check every single website that has applied to get AdSsense approval. So, positively they will use their crawler bots. The bots will check for every footprint on your blog. That’s why you should make sure; you have specified these tags with appropriate information.

Please keep in mind that your Meta Title should be between 69 characters (including spaces), and Meta Description should be between 156 characters (including spaces). If you are using platform like WordPress or Blogger, here are two guides which will cover all basic SEO requirements:

A DIY guide for WordPress Blog SEO
BlogSpot SEO preference

Have Sufficient Contents or Posts:

You must lead sufficient contents or posts on every page and category. In total, you should have 15-30 blog posts on your whole blog. This is not an official declaration. But, I recommend everybody to at least have it. So, you should have at least 3-4 posts in every category, tag and page. Google Adsense told that we must have sufficient contents in every single web page. So, we should add contents in all pages and categories. There shouldn’t be any blank page without any content. And these posts have to pass the minimum length of 500-600 words as it is the best blog post length. The more you increase the length, the more you go towards to get Google Adsense approval.

Blog Domain Must Old At least 6 Months:

As I mentioned above, in certain countries like India and China, there is a requirement for 6 months for the domain to apply for AdSense. Here is official statement from AdSenseteam:

In some locations, including China and India, we require publishers to have owned their sites for 6 months. We’ve taken this step to ensure the quality of our advertising network and protect the interests of our advertisers and existing publishers.

Some blog domain could get approved having less old than six months. Even, I got my Adsense account with just two-month-old domain. Can you imagine? But, the average domain age for certain geo-location should be six months.

Apply Using Root Domain:

You should always apply using the root domain like yourdomain.com. Not blog.yourdomain.com.

Be Serious to Choose Content Images:

Google Adsense doesn’t approve blogs if they lead to copyrighted contents. Copyrighted means the things that have been copied from others directory without their permission. And we make fault every time when choosing an image. Some people just go to an image directory, take their suitable images and upload these on their blogs. Did they ever check if they have permission to use these? The really sad news is that, most of the webmasters who fail to get Adsense because of this copyrighted law. And this is really caused by copyrighted images. Here are guides which will help you to find images for free:

Lead a Nice design and Blog Structure:

Blog structure is the basic structure of your blog. So, make sure that you have a nice looking header, content area, sidebar, footer, etc. Always think if the visitors will like the structure. If people like it, Adsense would definitely like it. The first impression of any blog comes with blog design, and you can take advantage of any professional looking templates (free or paid), and use it on your blog.

Check if Your Blog is Not Blocked by Google:

Be sure that, your blog is not blocked by Google. Because Adsense will check your blog statistics on their search engine. Don’t know how to check it? Just search for “site:yourdomain.com” on Google. If you find out search results, your blog is not blocked. But, if you not, it is blocked.

Don’t Have Adsense Prohibited Content:

Adsense has directly told that, sites with adult contents, copyrighted contents, drug alcohol-related contents, hacking cracking contents, violent contents, weapons related contents and other illegal contents will not be approved.

Visitors Are Not a Factor for Approval Yet:

For getting Adsense approved, visitors are not a factor. Because you will get approved depending on your blog quality. It is sure that the Adsense moderator will never check for visitor count. So, don’t worry about visitors. But, for generating revenues, you must have enough visitors.

Applying for Google Adsense:

If you follow all the above mentioned tips, you are most likely to get your AdSenseapplication approval at first go. But, before you apply for the same, here are two articles that you should definitely refer to:

Changes in Approved AdSense host partner site accounts
Google AdSense new account approval application process

And once you are ready, read this guide to apply for an AdSense account. Do let me know if you have any particular question related to AdSense approval, and I would love to answer them. If you enjoyed reading this article, don’t forget to share it on Facebook and Google plus.

9 Ways To Increase The Exposure Of Your Content

let me guess… You just published a high-quality content and are trying to figure out how to get more traffic to it?
Let’s talk about how you can increase the reach of your content by over 500%.
According to eMarketer, 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each week. But how many of these contents see the limelight?
Very few.
You can’t publish a piece of content and expect the world to see it when you consider the fact that over 2 million blog posts are published daily.
So how can you maximize the exposure of your content?
How can you ensure that your content gets links, shares, leads and sales?

1. Syndicate Your Content

James Clear used content syndication to take his blog from zero to 250,000 unique visitors per month. All in less than 2 years.
Content syndication works like this:

You publish a post on your blog
Then you republish it on an established site in your niche or sub-niche

For example, James Clear published “Lessons on Success and Deliberate Practice from Mozart, Picasso, and Kobe Bryant” on his blog.
Then, he tweaked the article a bit and republished it on Lifehacker.
Content syndication is a very powerful promotion strategy that makes your content works harder for you.

2. Do A Pre-Outreach For Your Content

In an AMA chat on Inbound.org, Brian Dean (the founder of Backlinko) confessed to emailing at least 100 people before his post goes live.
And it works for him.
Today, most of his posts rank on the first pages of Google for their target keywords.
Alex Turnbull used pre-outreach to get 1,000+ subscribers from a single blog post in 24 hours.
Turnbull created an influencers list four weeks before launch. He reached out to those influencers and tell them about his first blog post. 83% of the influencers he contacted shared his post.
Doing influencers pre-outreach can increase the exposure of your content.
Influencers hold the key to the readership kingdom. Just a single tweet from an influencer like Jeff Bullas could send massive visits to your blog post.

3. Boost Your Content With Paid Promotion

Most viral posts have thousands of social shares. You may not be aware that most of them were pushed with paid promotion on Facebook and Twitter.
For example, Viral Nova averages 100 million visits per month and was sold for $100 million. This is a business that was being run by just 3 people.
The secret to their traffic is Facebook ads. They create a blog post and push it through advertising on Facebook.
You’ll often see contents with thousands of shares on ViralNova. It’s because they promote their posts with Facebook ads.
Facebook advertising is an effective way to promote your blog post to the right audience.

4. Repurpose Your Content Into Different Formats

Repurposing your content is a new way to breed new life into it. Your content will be exposed to a new set of audience.
There are many ways to repurpose contents:

Webinars
Combine a set of blog posts and turn them into an ebook
Slideshare presentations
YouTube Videos
Podcasts
Infographics

If you’ve written a nice blog post, you can turn it into a video. Doing this will enable you to reach video lovers who might not read your blog post. The same thing applies to other content formats like webinars, podcasts and infographics.

5. Republish Your Content On Medium

Medium is a great community that can expose your contents to a passionate group of people who would share it with their networks.
Benji Hyam said that republishing his blog post on Medium generated 10k views in 4 days.
Smart bloggers are using Medium to get into authority publications like The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Forbes and Entrepreneur.
If your content is successful on Medium, you can just reach out to these publications and ask if they can republish your post.
These authority sites are always looking for contents that have been successful on Medium. They believe that if your content is successful on Medium, then there’s a great chance that their audience would like it. It’s a win-win deal for both parties.

6. Use Your Content To Answer Questions On Quora

Quora is a question and answer platform like Yahoo Answers and Stack Exchange. But it has a better community feature than both.
Quora is full of passionate people just like you. It’s a place where President Barack Obama can directly answer people’s questions.
Quora is a nice place to build up your profile and communicate with your target audience.
Many of your ideal customers are posting their questions on Quora. Quora lets you answer these questions and you can even use your blog post as answers. Just copy and paste and link back to your blog. Doing this will enable you to drive traffic and leads back to your blog.

7. Start Guest Blogging To Promote Your Post

Guest blogging is a powerful marketing strategy that helped Buffer acquired its first 100,000 users. It also helped Danny Ivy turned his blog into a 7-figure business.
Guest blogging is a nice way to build a business.
But what about using it to promote a blog post?
Matthew Barby used guest blogging to promote a content he published on his blog. As a result, the post got 247 backlinks from 91 domains. This helped the post ranks for highly competitive keywords on search engines.
You can use guest blogging to boost the backlinks to your blog post. As you know, links remain the number one ranking factor on Google.

8. Contact People Who Had Shared Similar Contents

Nothing beats direct outreach with people who had shared similar contents before.
As you know, Google and Bing uses social shares in their search algorithms.
Some people care a lot about the topic you’ve written about. Why not reach out to them telling them about your content?
It’s much easier to get someone to share your article than it takes them to link to your blog post. They can quickly login into their Twitter or Facebook account and share your link with their network. This exposes your content to more people which would lead to more shares, then links.
If people are sharing your contents, naturally, links will begin to follow.

9. Get Your Content Featured In Weekly And Monthly Roundups

Weekly and Monthly Link roundups are a great place to get links while exposing your content to a new group of people.
For example, Ana Hoffman publishes weekly roundups on her blog, the Traffic Generation Cafe. This is a great place to get links assuming you’re in the marketing niche.
Getting featured in a link roundup helps you establish yourself as an expert in your niche. The more you’re getting featured in roundups, the more people would start to pay attention to your blog.

Are You Building Your Affiliate Marketing Income on Digitally Sharecropped Quicksand

starting an eCommerce business is not as complex as it used to be just a few years ago. This is why you see so many online stores selling all kinds of stuff on the web.
But one problem that most of these new eCommerce websites face is attracting relevant traffic to their products.
And no traffic means no sales.
Starting a blog is one of the best things you could do for your eCommerce business. When you create new blog content, it helps you rank for relevant search keywords and generate traffic to your website. Studies show that websites that blog regularly, have 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages.
Blogging is also a great way to build your brand image, connect with your audience and increase sales.
bloggingbrand

However, since blogging is a time –intensive activity, you need to have strategy to ensure that your hard work isn’t wasted.
Here are a few eCommerce blogging tips to help you increase your online sales.

1. Understand the Needs of Your Customers

The objective of eCommerce blogging is to solve the problems of your readers by offering actionable, accurate and high-quality content for free. When you offer free actionable advice, readers start trusting you. And trust, according to several studies, is the number one factor that drives online sales.
However, to create accurate and high-quality content, you need to understand the needs of your customers and prospects. Ask yourself the following questions

What problem is my product solving?
What’s the core benefit and value that I’m offering my customers?
Why would someone spend money to buy my product?
What am I offering that others are not?
What questions are my prospects likely to ask when I offer them my product?

Don’t just assume the answers. Look for them on Quora, Facebook groups, LinkedIn Groups and your competitor blogs. You can also survey your existing customer base to get more insights.
When you come up with precise answers to each of these questions, you can use this knowledge to create high-quality content, answer the questions of your prospects and build a strong relationship with them.

2. Build Your eCommerce Store on a Blogging Friendly Platform

Over the last few years, dozens of free web-based eCommerce platforms have popped up and made it really simple to set up an online store. But many of them do not have their own blogging platforms.
To start a blog for your business, you need to ensure that you’re using an eCommerce platform that supports blogging. WordPress is the best option in most cases, since it can be used as an online store and a blogging platform at the same time.
But in case you’re using any other eCommerce app like Shopify, BigCommerce etc, you can integrate it with your WordPress blog.
In fact, most experts agree that even if your eCommerce store app has a blogging platform with it, it’s better to use WordPress because of its seemingly unlimited range of free plugins.

3. Create Multiple Content Types To Drive Engagement

Your blog is a content creation and publishing platform.
Why stick to just one form of content when you can mix things up and generate more interest in your audience?
For example, research shows that infographics and list posts get the highest number of social shares.

The best way to approach this is by creating a content plan for your blog and include different forms of content in it.
Here are a few examples

Product Focused Content

Since you’re running an eCommerce blog to help readers understand the benefits of your products and indirectly convince them to buy from you, product focused blog posts should be among your top content types.
Create blog posts that educate your readers and demonstrate your expertise. The eCommerce blog of Decor Clad is a good example.
content type1

Create useful content around your products and include links to your sales page within the content body where relevant.

Emotionally Driven Content

Selling is all about persuading your clients to take action. If your content can trigger the right emotions in your readers, selling becomes much easier.
There are two main components of an emotionally driven blog post

Effective storytelling
Powerful headline

Effective storytelling helps you engage customers and drives action.

Source: OneSpot

Jon Morrow, one my favorite bloggers and storytellers, generated six-figure sales from just one blog post.
That’s the power of an effective story.
However, an effective headline, the second component of emotional content, is even more important than storytelling. If your content headline doesn’t engage the readers immediately, they’re unlikely to read the rest of your piece.
For example, this eCommerce store selling men’s gifts uses a headline that immediately generates interest.
giftsmen

Video Content

High-quality product videos are among the most effective forms of content for eCommerce blogs. Using videos to demonstrate product usage can significantly boost your conversion rates.
You can also increase your website’s average time on site by embedding video content within text blog posts.
There are several other content forms like infographics, memes, product reviews etc. that you can include in your eCommerce content plan

4. Use Blogging to Build Your Email List

Email marketing is one of the biggest sources of eCommerce sales. According to studies, more than 65% of consumers in the U.S made a purchase in the last year because of an email.

More than 90% consumers check their email at least once a day, which gives you a great way to build long lasting relationships with your prospects.
Blogging can help you accelerate the list building process.
Not sure how? Here are a few ways.

You can offer post specific lead magnets in your blog posts to increase sign ups.

You can use a content locker plugin to hide a specific portion of your blog post and ask users to sign up to read the full post.
Regularly posting on your blog brings in organic search traffic to your site which can be converted into subscribers.

A blog opens up hundreds of ways to convert readers into subscribers. And when you have a large list, you can send them new product offers and convert more customers.

Wrapping Up

Some of the biggest eCommerce companies in the world are investing insane amounts of money in content creation and blogging. By starting an eCommerce blog, you can create awareness about your products, build a loyal tribe and generate cheap word of mouth for your brand. Just make sure you keep this post in mind while creating your next eCommerce blog.

Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress 2016

When it comes to website speed, Image optimization has never been so important as it is now. That is because images continue to be the largest resource in a web page (over 60% in 2015) but also because an ever larger number of people use mobile devices. And as we all now, mobile devices are usually not as fast or well connected as the laptop on your desk.
If you also consider that 1 in 4 websites worldwide use WordPress (yes, that is 25%+ market share) you’ll realize why the WP image optimization plugins are so important: they can be used to optimize 25% of the web. Quite a task!
Now, I spent a day testing all the WP image optimization plugins I could find and compiled a list with them so it would help you save a day and make a decision faster. Please note that I included in this list only the plugins that are able to do “cloud” optimization. There are also plugins that can perform the optimization on the server where the WP site is hosted but I don’t like them as you (usually) need to install additional software and they can significantly load your system. That’s especially bad for shared hosting.
Here’s a short, alphabetically sorted, list with all of them so you see them all at a glance:

Now let’s take them one by one and see what’s up with them:

EWWW Cloud

I couldn’t test it, it has no free plan though it is listed on WP repository. Strange.

ShortPixel

A simple to use plugin with a clean interface and useful features. You need to subscribe to ShortPixel to get the API Key and get the plugin going. Upon subscription you receive 100 free credits/month. While it isn’t as many as those offered by TinyPNG they should be enough for the average WP blogger. Also, this plugin only counts the images they succeeded optimizing by at least 5%. Otherwise no credits are charged. Interesting deal.
It is the only plugin I tested that offers a backup and restore solution for the optimized images so it should be safe give it a try.
What I felt was missing was more free credits

Plans start at 4.99$/month and one-time packages are also available. You can optimize 10,000 images with $9.99 which is a good bargain especially if you have large images.

Kraken

It is a simple to use plugin with just a few options and a clean interface. Compared with other plugins its optimization capabilities are in the low end. It can automatically optimize images but there is no backup.
In case an image isn’t properly optimized there isn’t an easy way to restore it. If you upload many images at once and have Automatically optimize uploads: setting checked it would take considerably much more time to finish uploading the files.
What I believe it lacks the most is the ability to bulk process all the images by clicking a single button.
Oh, and they haven’t updated their plugin since 9 months. It makes me wonder…
Its free plan includes 50MB/month and their paid plans start at $9/month. There is no option for one-time payments.

TinyPNG

Compress_JPEG___PNG_images_—_WordPress_Plugins

What I like about TinyPNG is that they have the option to optimize only certain image sizes, they offer the option to resize the original image (it can lead to great savings) and they have a generous free monthly plan (500 images/month for free).
What I didn’t like is that they offer no backup option, the optimization results are in KB/MB (it is rather confusing for me) and there is only the option to optimize the images as lossy.
While testing their plugin I could notice blurry sections on some pictures. While they didn’t look very bad it wasn’t nice for the trained eye either.
TinyPNG have a generous monthly plan of 500 images and also the option to pay exactly what you need. So if you need to optimize only 3500 images then you only pay for that.
The cost for optimizing 10,000 images is $85 which is rather high.

Optimus

It was easy to test this plugin as it doesn’t require an API Key to work. But in its free version it is quite limited: you can only optimize images up to 100KB and advanced features aren’t available.
Even if you paid for it you could only optimize images up to 5MB, they cannot be rescaled and there is only the option to optimize them as lossless.
What I liked at this service the most is the pricing: they offer a $19/year unlimited plan. While certainly not the best or versatile plugin the pricing could be a good deal for someone that can live with average optimization and limited features.

WP smush

This plugin is sort of the grandfather of the WP optimization plugins. It used to work on Yahoo’s API but they turned it off at one moment and the plugin was sold to WPMU DEV. While being the optimization plugin with most downloads and users it is rather a demo version of what the PRO plugin could do if you spend $19/month.
There is no need for an API Key to run (or just test) this plugin which is great but it only optimizes files under 1MB and many if not all the features aren’t available unless you pay for them. The PRO version seems to be feature-ladden which is good but I haven’t got yet the opportunity to fully test it. I may update this article once I got the chance to do it.
Now here are 2 tables to help you put in perspective how different plugins perform.
A simple optimization test on 4 types of files (an archive with the files is available here link to be added)

Service/Type	JPG	PNG	GIF	PDF
Kraken	51.66%	75%	32.35%	N/A
Optimus	82%	25%	N/A	N/A
ShortPixel	96.73%	74.93%	27.51%	88.76%
TinyPNG	98.22%	75.61%	N/A	N/A
WP Smush	43.5%	0%	27.2%	N/A

Notes:

TinyPNG plugin has the best optimization for PNG and JPEG but ShortPixel comes very close
ShortPixel has the ability to optimize most of the file types while coming close to TinyPNG in terms of optimization power
Kraken performed average on JPG but did best on GIF optimization
WP Smush to my surprise did worst on all the file types with the mention that it didn’t even try to optimize the PNG file, it considered it “Already optimized”. Really?

The features/options I considered most important in a simple to compare table

Service	API Key	Backup	Bulk	Lossy	Free/m	Max size	Resize
Kraken	Yes	No	No	Yes	50MB	32MB	No
Optimus	Paid	No	Yes	No	∞	5MB	No
ShortPixel	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	100	∞	Yes
TinyPNG	Yes	No	Yes	Only	500	?	Yes
WP Smush	Paid	No	Yes	Paid	∞

I couldn’t figure out what’s the maximum files size limit for TinyPNG but while testing I haven’t reached it
Kraken is the only plugin without an option for bulk optimization

To learn more about improving the search performance and engagement of content on your blog, be sure to also check out our SEO Tools for 2016 and Organic Search Optimization tips.

5 Tips For Using Social Media To Build Your Blog

There are a whole lot of blogs out there on the internet. Tumblr reports a cumulative total of 300 million blogs on their site since 2011, while WordPress reports that over 400 million people visit their blogs each month. And those two numbers don’t even account for the many other blogging platforms and self-created blogs that are out there. As you sit and read this article, the number of blog posts written around the world has been climbing at a rapid pace.
On one hand, this means that the world of blogging is incredibly crowded, which can have a whole lot of bloggers feeling like very small fish in a very big pond. On the other hand, though, the numbers show that people are reading blogs more than ever, which means that bloggers have the chance to reach an enormous global audience with their content.
Reaching that global audience, however, requires a good deal of conscientious effort. While a blog’s content is the most important element of a widely-read blog, good content alone will not necessarily guarantee a huge audience. More and more, bloggers have to reach out to their audience in order to attract viewers to their sites. One of the main platforms through which bloggers reach their readers, perhaps not surprisingly, is social media.
With that in mind, here are five tips for using social media to build your blog.

Find Out Where Your Readers Spend Their Time

While you’d certainly be wise to make sure you cover at least some ground on the major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it’s also worth honing in a little bit and seeing where you can make the biggest impact with your social media content. If you haven’t identified your target audience already, do that. Then figure out if there’s a particular social media site that they frequent. Are you writing for a tech-oriented audience? Then maybe focusing some efforts on sites like Slashdot or Y Combinator’s Hacker News will help you get the most bang for your buck in terms of devoting time to social media. Analytics for social media platforms can dig up unbelievable amounts of valuable insights, so make sure you do your homework in order to efficiently optimize your blog’s social media presence.

Watch Your Words

You want to write catchy headlines for your blog content on social media. That’s a given. But there’s a science to the whole process, so you want to make sure you’re selecting keywords properly. SEO principles dictate that organically highlighting the major keywords in your native content and social media posts will help boost your Google results page position, and this should go without being said, but the higher your blog is listed for relevant Google searches, the better off you’ll be in terms of reaching the greatest possible audience. Be careful not to go overboard with keywords, though; there is such a thing as over-optimizing, and it can actually hurt your search rankings.

Automate Your Content Sharing

Your audience most likely respects consistent and timely content creation from your blog. Make sure your social media presence is equally timely by posting your social media content on a (somewhat) fixed schedule. Figure out roughly what time(s) of day your audience is most often interacting with you on social media, and schedule your posts during that time. There are all sorts of social media automation tools that allow you to schedule posts ahead of time, so you shouldn’t have to sweat getting your content out at the right time.

Reuse Old Content

One of social media’s most prominent functions in society is to serve as a forum for people to react to breaking news around the world, so if you’ve got an old blog post that relates perfectly to the latest bit of hot news, it’s in your best interest to share that content via social media. It’s not enough, however, to just post a link to the blog post via tweet or Facebook post. Reworking content for an updated post requires conscientious planning and even revising the headline or title of the piece. But it’s often worth it since reusing old content is a great way to get the most out of old posts and maximize your social media presence through timely content linking.

Get Personal

Many social media experts have written at length about a phenomenon called social media karma. It’s a pretty self-explanatory practice, which is meant to promote etiquette and good stewardship on social media platforms in the name of making yourself and your business look good. Keep this social media etiquette in mind, but don’t be afraid to engage with your audience on a more personal level. Use different social media sites to respond personally to users interacting with you, and be sure to link to and comment on other people’s content to show that you’re actively involved in the community, as well as an authority on recent activity and what is trending in your field.
Social media is there to help you gain the wide audience your blog deserves. Utilize these tips to make sure you’re promoting your blog via social media in the most efficient and practical way possible.

Blogger vs wordpress is one of the most widely discussed topic in blogging field as many bloggers who are beginners usually get confused to choose the best blogging platform for blogging. No doubt that both blogger and wordpress are one of the most popular blogging platform available now but both of them has some advantages and disadvantages. There are literally millions of blog which are hosted in blogger and wordpress but which is the best platform for you in terms of SEO and for making money or for beginners.

Don’t worry I am going to discuss about each of these topics one by one. Recently I was reading a very famous internet marketing forum there I found this question and believe me it was very thrilling to know what people think about blogger vs wordpressand few questions which I though worth answering on this blogs are

blogger vs wordpress SEO

blogger vs wordpress 2015 which is best better and why?

blogger vs wordpress for making money

blogger vs wordpress for beginners

And I personally think that by answering the above set of queries will help many beginners in deciding which blogging platform to use and which can yield them better results both in terms of SEO and making money with their blogs

pro tips for beginners – Choose best blogging platform if you want to build a successful blog and make money

So here we are going to see a very widely discussed topic which most of the beginner bloggers want to know about and this will help them to kick start their blogging journey without any doubt or confusion. I have used both blogger and wordpress in past and present so I know few facts which you might find very helpful So without wasting much time lets see all the above mentioned topics one by one. Shall we? Yes you nodded

Blogger vs WordPress 2015 For SEO & Making Money For Beginners

Here we will see each topic one by one because this will help you to understand the benefits of each platform for different tasks. Since many want to start their blog for free, many are beginners, some what to start for business while many of us want to make money at the same time but no worries I will explain each topic one by one so that you will not have to refer any other blog posts for this topic and will make your job much easier.

Blogger vs WordPress SEO – which is best

If you want me to answer honestly then without second thought wordpress is more SEO friendly than blogger since it’s coded cleanly and there are less bugs and errors because wordpress developers always keep track of what’s best in terms of SEO. But does it means that you cannot optimze blogger blog Yes you can surely optimize your blogger blog but for that you have to manually insert meta tags, optimize header tags, optimize title tags to show post title before blog title in blogger, Insert google verification codes as well as if you want to insert adsense you have to manually add code in the templates if you have set up channels to track your ad performance which might consume lots of time but more techy stuffs for beginners

Even when I started using blogger for the first time I had to manually find various codes and insert it in my blogger template which used to create quite a bit of headache but with wordpress you don’t have to because in wordpress there are n number of plugins which can do the job just by installing them and tweaking few settings and you are done

Apart from this technical stuffs I have found that wordpress posts get much higher ranking in search results as compared to blogger posts and again the reason behind it that you coding is neat and clean and the plugins enhance it and make it perfect to ranking higher in Google and other search results

Earlier when I used to write post title in blogger I was always worried that whether Google will chop my title being too long and many time they did and I have to use the third party sites for this but with wordpress there is a superb plugin which I am sure that you must have heard about is SEO by yoast plugin it’s one of the best SEO plugins in wordpress and you can check all the best plugins resources and I am sure that this plugins will be there. By using this plugin you can make your blog posts seo friendly right away from wordpress dashboard which is not available in blogger platform and you have to manually optimize your blog posts and I know not every body is good with SEO So WordPress will help you in this also.

Blogger vs WordPress For Making Money In 2015

Now this is the most interesting part which interests most of the bloggers no matter they are beginners or pro bloggers everybody wants to make money by blogging So how exactly this is affected by blogger vs wordpress and which blogging CMS will help you to make more money. Lets see

You must have heard about Google adsense it is the most popular and widely used advertising networks for bloggers and website owners. If you are beginner then you just have to apply for google adsense and when you blog or website will start a free blog and make money then you just have to place small snippets of code in your blog to make money for free. It’s is easy enough yes it easy So lets see which blogger or wordpress will enable you in making money as well.

Since Google adsense is one of the most popular advertising networks but it’s not the only one there are many other advertising networks and monetizing methods by which you can make money by blogging and Google adsense is among one of them

One advantage of using blogger here over wordpress is that if you are having good number of quality blog posts in your blogger blog then your adsense approval chances is increased by a lot since it’s a Google both are Google products and Google will give a share of luck for those who are using Blogger platform over wordpress but this is not hard and fast rule but helps a lots and I have seen many bloggers getting google adsense approval by using blogger blog

But if you want to make more money by blogging then here also WordPress wins because if you will ask many pro bloggers they are not using adsense at all on their blogs or websites because they have found many other monetizing methods which are earning them handsome amount of money like

Affiliate Marketing

Sponsored Reviews

Buysellads

Consulting

SEO services etc

So if you want to maximize your money making potential then you must give more preference to wordpress because there are many advertising networks which don’t accept blogger blog one of them is very famous advertising network which is buysellads. And there are many blogger who are using buysellads to make good money from their blogs. Apart from this there is affiliate marketing which is considered as one of the best and mostly liked monetizing methods used by most of the probloggers and the results are awesome.

Since there are many wordpress affiliate programs which you can participate and promote them on your blog like premium wordpress themes, plugins and software which you must promote only when you are using wordpress however you can still promote all these products while using blogger but you will not make money why? because you are using blogger and are promoting wordpress products. It’s like you are recommending products and services to your visitors which you are not using and this is not at all going to help in affiliate marketing

Apart for this if you still are in love with Google adsense then it’s great but for adding the adsense code manually inside your blogger header or footer is a daunting task and you will have to tweak your blogger templates but by using wordpress there are many plugins which make this task easier

WordPress vs Blogger for Beginners

If you are beginner and have just started blogging then you can start with blogger and when you are familiar with how to blog and various SEO tips and tricks then you can migrate from blogger to wordpress and I think it’s the best way for any beginner who want to start a blog and have confusion about wordpress vs blogger.

To be honest I also started using blogger and later on moved to wordpress as I gained more experience and wanted more functionality and give more professional look to my blog. There are many big bloggers who have started in this fashion because blogging is not for all some will find it interesting and will move on to become a full time blogger while many of them will quit blogging after few months. So to test and see that blogging is the right choice for you or not you can start with blogger then move to wordpress later.

Blogger vs WordPress Free & Best

Blogger platorm is free but there are 2 types of wordpress blog one is similar to blogger which is free and the other is self hosted wordpress blog which I recommend if you are serious about blogging or want to start a blog for your business.

Self hosted blogs are not free like blogger because you have to buy hosting and domain name for you blog but with blogger you don’t have to pay anything literally you can start a free blog and make money but for wordpress you have to buy hosting.

Although there is wordpress.com which offer free hosting which is similar to blogger but again this is not way close to self hosted wordpress blog in terms of the ease of use and functionality which you are going to get with self hosted wordpress blogs

Blogger vs WordPress Review & Conclusion

So I think that this comparion and review of wordpress vs blogger has been dominated by wordpress and yes it’s will definitely enhance your blogging experience and will save lot of time effort and money. I would recommend that if you want to start a blog or website for your business to strictly go for wordpress rather than blogger but for beginners you can opt for blogger since you can just learn blogging basics and then move on to wordpress as time goes on and I think this is the best strategy which I used personally and by many other probloggers

Wednesday, May 18, 2016